Ask Better Questions, Get Better Solutions | Stephen Shapiro, Innovation Keynote Speaker

So let's go to a little bit of an experiment here. This is something which I think will have you powerfully get how to think differently about problems in a way that you'll be able to ask better questions and also find better solutions. So this is one of those exercises that I said you're not going to want to do. Well, guess what? I want everybody here to participate because there's a powerful learning at the end of this. What I need you to do is they need you to partner up with one other person. So turn to the person next to you. So get into groups of two. If you have an odd number, turn around behind you, but get paired up with one other person. All right, that was the easy part of this thing. Here's what I want you to do. For a moment. I want you to imagine that I'm holding in my hand a real brick. For those of you in the front row in the VIP section, you'll know that this is actually just a Styrofoam, a rubber brick. But imagine for a moment it's a real brick. What I want you to do in your pairs is I want you to go back and forth and come up with as many uses of a brick as you can in 45 seconds. Just go back and forth, come up with as many uses as you can. So the first person, for example, could say, if you're missing a brick, put it in the patio. If you're missing a brick, the second person might say, use it to weigh down as a paperweight or break it in half to make bookends. First person might say, throw it at the TV if you lose remote control. So I'm going to come down into the audience, and the person who has what I think is the most unusual answer will get a copy of the Best Practices are Stupid book. So let's see what you came up with. All right, so who has an eager person over here? What was your best answer? We used it to weigh down a body. To weigh down a dead body. You do realize that the police monitor these events looking for psychopathic people. Good. Yes. Plant flowers. Plant flowers. Okay, nice. So the one that has holes in it. Good. A brick shower. I have one. Oh. So the shower, it's not like it shoots bricks at you. It's not a brick. Okay, great. Skin exfoliator. Skin exfoliator. Good. Really effective on. Good. To hold a bunch of ice cream cones. So the one that you see depicted there. Excellent. A what? Candle holder. Candle holder. Excellent. Use less water in the toilet. Use less water in your toilet. Very good. Throw out annoying co workers. A good way to motivate people. Breaking and entering. Test tube, sugar holder shooter. Oh, much better than sugar. We're going to party later on. Good. Dip it in paint and make your own wrapping paper. Dip it in paint and make your own wrapping paper. Yes. Okay. Using a presentation, throw it at people. Good. Yes. Dominoes for giants. Dominoes for giants. Haven't heard that one. Great. So put it under the wheel of a tire to prevent the car from rolling backwards. Excellent. In fact, we can combine a bunch of things here. So what you could do is actually hit somebody over the head, put the body in the trunk of the car, and then put the brick on the accelerator to drive the car over the bridge into the water, eliminating all the evidence. Good. I'm going to give the book to actually the domino giant guy because I haven't heard that one yet. Here's what we just did. This is an important learning here because we're going to do this a second way. You'll have another chance to get a book. If you look at the way people solve problems, it is natural. Our tendency in the way we solve every problem in the world is we will look at first of all what we know about the problem. So in this case, we know that it's used in construction. So a lot of people will say we put it in houses. That's sort of the super obvious thing. But then we look at the attributes of the problem. So we will look at it from the perspective of that it's rough, so I can use it as loofah. If I run out, it is heavy, so I can weigh bodies down. It's dangerous, so I can beat people over the head. So what we do, our natural way of developing solutions is if this is the problem we're working on, we look at the problem through the lens of our knowledge, understanding and expertise, and we develop solutions. We're going to do this exercise again with a twist. The twist is it's the same question, what are all the ways in which we can use a brick? But this time, instead of looking at the brick, we're going to connect to something random and we will find as many uses of a brick for that random situation. So, for example, we're not just asking what are all the ways in which you can use a brick? We're asking what are all the ways in which you can use a brick on the body? So that might be the random thing. So what are all the ways you could use a brick on the body? Well, you could use it to improve your posture. You could, if it were a real brick, use it to pump up your biceps, exfoliate really bad skin, or buff your nails. If you got really bad nails, let's see, you could strap it to your shoes, give you a little extra height. If your height is not where you want it to be. And if you happen to be playing soccer and you're blocking a penalty kick, good protection. So what we're going to do is in your pairs, in your pairs, I want one person to be A and one person to be B. So decide who's going to be A. Who's going to be B. All right, that was definitely the easiest part of this activity. Here's what we're going to do. Person A is going to name something random. It could be anything. It could be in the kitchen. It could be in the bathroom. It could be on a beach. We've had people use bricks in a marriage. Lots of interesting uses of a brick in a marriage. And person B will take 45 seconds to develop as many uses of a brick as they can for that one random situation. Then when I tell you to, and only when I tell you to, person B will get their revenge because person B will name something random and person A will come up with the uses. So let's get started. A, name something random. B, come up with the uses and switch when I tell you to. Okay, let's see what answers you have. I'm going to go to this side. All right, so what I need you to do is to tell me what the random context was and than your one best favorite use of a brick. Yes. Sex. Sex was the random thing. All right. Keep it clean. Yes. Prop yourself up in certain positions. Prop yourself up in certain positions. Good. I can't in good conscience award a book for that. But over there, if you're a polar bear. A polar bear. Self defense against a penguin. If you're a polar bear. Good. Excellent. What else? Over here, the random was airplane. Airplane was the random. And we thought an artistic device for scratching decor on the inside of the plane. An artistic device for scratching decor on the inside of the plane. All right, good, good. See somebody back here in the hospital. In the hospital. Use it to hold your gown down. Use it to hold your gown down. An alternative to airplane food. An alternative to airplane food. Is that the random? The random was. The random was airplane. Airplane. Airplane food's terrible. So it's a. I'd rather eat the brick. Excellent. And it's actually good. Cleans your Teeth in the process, too. So. Excellent. Two more. How about two more answers? Yes, snowstorm and a way to get attention. No, a way to get attention. Excellent. Last one. Oh, we had it in the boardroom, and we could use it as punishment. If somebody comes up with a dumb idea, they have to hold the brick. Punishment for a dumb idea, you have to hold the brick. Wow, you're making it tough for me to choose what the best one is here. I think I've never heard the one about polar bears with. Who had the polar bear. All right, if you can pass this down to the person with the polar bear. So here is the important question. Here is the important question. Let's go back to the two different models that we were working with here. So my question to you is, which way do you. Do you think yielded solutions that were more creative? And I want to be clear. I don't mean it was easier, and I don't mean that you developed more solutions. What I mean is that the solutions you developed, you felt were a little further afield. So you have only three options here. Option one is you felt that the first way. What are all the ways of using a brick? The unbounded version. The second time was connecting it to something random. And the third option is that you feel they're roughly the same. So how many felt the first way yielded solutions that were more creative? Don't be bashful. That's okay. All right, so five or six of you, maybe ten of you. Good. How many thought the second way yielded solutions that were more creative? A much larger group. Great. How many felt they were roughly the same? Okay, not too. Too many. And how many of you just don't raise your hands in public? I think there's usually a few of you there. Great. Well, I've asked this question now of about a half million people, and what we found is that in audiences between 75 and 95% of an audience will choose the second method pretty much as you did. Now, here's the thing that's sort of your opinion, but we've actually done tests with this where we would work on a real live problem, and then we'd use the first method, and we would have each person list off the solutions that they developed. And after just a handful of people, we'd exhausted almost every single answer that existed in the room. When we used the second method, we got a much broader set of solutions. Now, this is really interesting because what it shows us is this, paradoxically, paradoxically, more structure enables greater innovation. The first method was think Outside the box, come up with the use of a brick. The second method, we actually confined you. There's a client I worked with that is a very interesting. They applied this in a very interesting way because what they'd always wanted to do, they're in a commodity business. They. They make label makers. Everybody and their grandmother can make a label maker. It's sort of a commodity item these days. And what they used to do is they had their employees say, well, what are all the different uses? How could we sell the different markets that we're not currently selling to? They used the first method, and they didn't really get very many answers. After a while, they got all the obvious answers, and then they thought, well, great, we've exhausted it all. Then they tried the second method. And what they did was they took the time to list 200 different industries or roles. Tollbooth collectors, nurses, libraries, offices. And then each day they would choose one of those 200, and they would say, what are all the different ways in which we can use our product in toll booths? What are all the ways we can use our product in a library? And what they found was that the quantity of solutions they got increased, the quality increased in terms of the level of creativity, and the relevance increased because the context was set. And, you know, this is actually not surprising. Steve Jobs once said that creativity is just having enough dots to connect. Creativity is just having enough dots to connect. And the reason why creative people are so is they've had more experiences, those dots have had more experiences, they've thought more about those experiences. So innovation and creativity is the ability to make connections in ways that we might not necessarily do it. And there's some fascinating research out of Harvard that actually reinforces this from a more scientific perspective. This Harvard professor looked at 17,000 different patents, and of those 17,000 different patents, he found that a large percentage, nearly all of them were. Were what he would call adaptive or derivative patents. That is, they were variations on some past patent, they were variations on some past solution. And what he found was that in most of the situations, the problem was solved by the patent was filed by somebody with domain expertise. That is, if it was a chemistry problem, it was solved by a chemist. It was a biology problem, it was solved by a biologist. But what he also found in looking at these patents was that the ones that were not adaptive in nature, the ones that were not derivative of previous patents, the true breakthroughs in every situation were solved by either someone from a different domain of expertise or from multidisciplinary teams so if it was a chemistry problem, it might have been solved by a biologist. If it was a physics problem, maybe it was somebody from Hollywood who found a solution. So what I want you to get is not only framing the right question, but but also thinking about how do we think about things differently. I want you to make one assumption here. Whatever you are working on, whatever problem you think you have, the odds are someone has solved your problem already, but in a different domain.